Are Digital Downloads and Online Courses Dead?
(Let’s Talk About Lead Magnets, Funnels, and What’s Actually Working Now)
As a marketing strategist, copywriter, and designer, I’ve made my fair share of all of these: freebies, funnels, full-blown courses, you name it. I’ve seen what works, what flops, and what used to convert like crazy but doesn’t even get a click anymore.
Everywhere you look, there’s another “free guide,” “mini course,” or “masterclass” promising to change your life or business in 10 minutes flat.
But if your downloads are sitting untouched in inboxes or your last course launch didn’t land, you’re not the only one.
The truth is, digital downloads and online courses aren’t dead. They’re just overdone.
And people are tired of being handed more things they’ll never use.
The Freebie Fatigue Is Real
Lead magnets used to be exciting. A freebie felt like a secret handshake between your brand and your audience.
Now, everyone has one. And your audience knows most of them are free for a reason 👀
It’s not that people don’t want free value anymore. They just want something that actually helps them. Whether you’re a service provider, product-based brand, or B2B business, your audience doesn’t need another PDF that collects dust in the inbox. They need something that makes them say, “Wow, I can’t believe that was free!?”
Think of your freebie as a sample of your brilliance, not bait.
The DIY Era Is Fading
Between 2020 and 2024, the internet wouldn’t shut up about one thing: “Turn your expertise into a course.” Everyone was told to package their knowledge, slap it on Kajabi, and call it passive income.
“I made 1 bajillion dollars in an hour doing this one thing!” 🤢
That worked for a while, but consumer habits and the market has changed.
Your audience doesn’t want to spend hours watching you click through a slide deck, learning how to do something they could just pay you—or someone else—to handle. They’re busy as hell. Everyone is.
And it’s not about how much money they make or have. It’s about what their time is worth. People aren’t stingy; they’re selective. They want a real return on what they invest—whether that’s money, minutes, or mental energy.
If they’re spending with you, it better do something.
Most buyers fall into two groups:
People who want something they can use right away.
People who want someone else to just handle it.
That’s true for every kind of business. Service-based, product-based, or B2B — doesn’t matter. Even e-commerce brands can build smart education around how their products make life easier, not just how they’re made.
People still love to learn, but they love results more.
Education is great. Execution sells faster.
If You’re Going to Teach, Make It Art
Teaching isn’t dead. It’s just gotten lazy.
People still love to learn. They watch documentaries for fun. They binge history TikToks. They’ll spend hours going down a rabbit hole if it feels interesting, useful, or emotionally rewarding.
Education isn’t the problem; it’s the delivery.
If you’re going to educate your audience, make it feel like an experience. Not another “module one, lesson one” setup that looks like every other online course.
That kind of structure can still work, especially for organizations, certification programs, or deeper learning, but even then, it needs creativity. Good learning design still requires emotion, storytelling, and intentional pacing.
And the days of recording yourself teaching live and expecting it to sell as a course are over. People don’t want to sit through unedited Zoom replays or hear you say, “Can everyone see my screen?” They expect polish if they’re investing their money and time into a course.
The best education feels creative, personal, and easy to finish. It gives people that little dopamine hit of progress. It could be a short email series, a mini workshop, or a beautifully designed toolkit that helps them do one thing better, faster, or smarter.
Your audience should walk away with something they didn’t have before, something tangible beyond just “knowledge.” Maybe that’s a new system, a finished asset, or a real result they can point to and say, “I used this.”
That’s what makes it worth their time.
What’s Actually Working Now
→ Interactive freebies like quizzes, calculators, and templates that create instant results
→ Mini courses and bundles that are short, focused, and entertaining — designed to stand alone or stack into a larger, higher-ticket offer.
→ Strategic lead magnets that attract the right people, looking for something specific, instead of everyone with an email address
→ Creative education that blends design, storytelling, and delivery; visual, interactive, or even audio-based.
→ High-ticket, done-for-you offers for people who want to skip the DIY phase and get instant results.
The Bottom Line
Digital downloads and courses aren’t dead. The quick, lazy, and uninspired ones are.
People still want to learn, but they don’t want to waste their time or their money.
If your freebie, funnel, or course gives people a real result and a reason to trust you, it will always work.
And if it also makes them realize they’d rather hire you to do it for them, even better.
Don’t Forget the Strategy
All of this only works if the strategy makes sense. You can have the prettiest course, the most creative freebie, or the smartest funnel in the world, but if it doesn’t connect your offer to a solution and your audience to a problem they’re actually experiencing, it’s not going to land or make you the money you’re hoping for.
If you’re taking the time to build any of this, a lead magnet, a course, a funnel, a system, don’t skip the foundations. Otherwise, you’re just creating noise and wasting your own time.
Before you touch Canva or Kajabi, make sure you’ve nailed your:
Offer clarity: What problem are you solving, and what’s your solution?
Audience: Who is this for? What are they experiencing right now, and what do they want instead? (Understand their pain states and the transformation they’re chasing.)
Messaging: Does your language reflect the real voice of your audience, the way they actually think, talk, and search for answers?
Positioning: Where does your brand sit in the market, and how do you stand out from everyone else selling something similar?
Customer journey: Do you understand your buyer’s psychology and their level of problem awareness? How are you guiding them from curiosity to commitment?
Brand identity: Is your brand consistent across your mission, values, voice, visuals, and guidelines, or does it shift every time you post?
When you have those pieces locked in, everything you build after that, freebies, courses, funnels, launches, will convert more naturally and easily.
If that foundation still feels fuzzy or hard to define, that’s your sign to get support. The strategy is where everything starts, and it’s what turns all the creative work into results that actually last.